


The Ruthless Calculus of War

by agentpluto



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 04:19:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4550181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentpluto/pseuds/agentpluto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thessia's fall took its toll on Shepard. Garrus wants to make sure she's okay.</p><p>(Set after the Priority: Thessia mission in ME3)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ruthless Calculus of War

**Author's Note:**

> Reuploaded because I'm a scrub and Ao3 is confusing for me since I'm a scrub and I've really heavily edited this fic from the first version I put up. Also this is technically still my first fic up on here so pls be gentle

He’d spotted her in the Mess.  
  
She was leaning back against the countertop with a datapad in hand as she waited for whatever was cooking in the communal Levo-amino microwave. It'd been a sight Garrus seen a lot over the past few weeks - especially since they'd gotten back from their mission on Thessia -and he wasn’t quite sure he was getting used to it. She'd been running on fumes at that point, there was no hiding it. Even he could see how drained she was as he gave her a once-over from the main battery. When the microwave dinged, Shepard barely looked up from the data pad’s glowing blue screen in front of her to retrieve her food, and she wordlessly shuffled towards the elevator back up to her quarters.

Garrus had things to do, of course he did. In a time of war, they all had their own duties to complete. For example, he was in the middle of calibrating algorithms for new fits on the Normandy's Thanix cannon, an important task seeing as the ship needed to be performing at the best of its abilities for whatever was to come. However, that didn’t stop him from loading up an automatic program to scan through the last couple of hours of work. He reasoned it would free him so he could go check on Shepard and still have things on track in the battery. Two stones - one bird, or whatever that human expression was.  
  
Garrus changed out of his armour before going up to see her, hoping that his casual civvies would be a little more comforting to be around than the usual silver and blue plating he wore so often on the ship. The armour had almost become a second set of skin and plates for him, however he doubted Shepard would appreciate it as he did. It would probably just be another reminder of the war raging on in the galaxy outside the SR2. She'd seen too much armour, too much chrome and too many soldiers. No need to put more weight on her shoulders.  
  
He followed the path Shepard had taken not ten minutes earlier and could feel the eyes of his fellow crew mates on him. He even dared to meet their gazes and had been greeted with expressions of empathy and understanding, as if they knowing exactly what his business was seeing him in his casual clothing. Everyone else on the ship could probably see how absolutely exhausted their commander was. When the elevator arrived at his floor, he punched in the commander's quarters as the destination and ascended the levels of the ship with a knotted feeling in his stomach.  
  
The glowing holo-lock spun and beeped and the door opened, and Shepard turned her chair to stand and straighten up. At least, she looked like she was about to before realising it was just the concerned blue-eyed turian and not another of her crew mates. So instead, she turned back around to her meal and the mass of data pads accumulated on her desk.  
  
“Can it wait, Garrus?” She asked, not even looking up from whatever mission report she’d had her eyes glued to. Garrus strode over and leaned against her desk.  
  
“No. You need a break,” he said, subvocals dropping low into a worried tone. “You haven't put that datapad down since Thessia.”  
  
“I'll get some rest when I'm done.” Shepard took another forkful of whatever strange, sweet smelling human food she had, and paused just before the fork passed her lips, grasping for another of the data pads on the table, before actually putting the fork in her mouth. She looked tired, hollow. He knew his commander; he knew her well enough that she probably hadn't slept in days, and he knew that she'd probably go on for as long as she could before she’d end up crashing in some random corner of the Normandy.  
  
“And when will you be done?” He didn’t move, or take his eyes off her. He just stood there, watching the exhausted woman before him. Little things, details, made him anxious: her chewed human fingernails, the deep purple of the bags under her eyes, her unkempt hair.  
  
“When we're done with the Reapers,” she mumbled, almost to herself.  
  
“Shepard, listen. I've said it before. You and I both know you need a clear head to win this war. Even James said you're - what's that human saying? Burning candles with both ends? The point is, you need to take a break.”  
  
Shepard looked up at him, and for the first time since he'd come up to her quarters, they made eye contact. Irises a dull green rather than the vibrant rich emerald he'd come to love, she just stared up at him.  
  
He'd thought he'd lost his ability to feel self-conscious around her long ago, but with the way Shepard's gaze burned into him as she looked over every one of his features, his scars, his colony markings, Garrus felt the blush warming up his neck.  
  
“Shepard, I--”  
  
“You look tired,” she uttered.  
  
“I look tired? Spirits, Shepard, you're practically sleepwalking.”  
  
Shepard half-grunted in opposition. “Mission reports have to be done. Hackett needs the intel and overview from Thessia. The Asari matriarchs need the reports on the KIA squads and Kai Leng. We--”  
  
She was half way through rattling yet another thing on her list when Garrus leaned forward to place a hand on her shoulder, effectively silencing her.  
  
“C'mon. Just a couple of hours sleep. Please. And then I'll leave you to do as many reports as you want.”  
  
She paused and then, begrudgingly, stood from her chair and rubbed at her eyes.  
  
“Would you...”- her murmur was barely loud enough for his translator to pick up, but he feels like he would have understood even if it didn't. She tugged at the sleeve of his tunic and half-grunted, half-whimpered, “... Stay with me for a while?”  
  
“Whatever you need,” he replied softly, mandibles flaring in what he hoped would translate into a comforting smile.  
  
Her head tipped forward and pressed into his chest, and he drew his arms up around her to gently rub circles into her back. This was how humans liked to be comforted, right? Either way, she didn’t object, and instead, she leaned into him and breathed slowly.  
  
They spent a couple of minutes propped against each other before Shepard was dragged to the bed, Garrus with a supporting arm around her the whole time. She fell onto the mattress and sighed long and hard, as though she hadn't laid down in years, and pulled at his sleeve for him to join her. He followed, laying down next to her and resting his head in the turian pillows that lay on 'his' half of her bed. He'd forgotten that she’d gone out and bought them on shore leave at one point after he complained about waking up with a kink in his neck every time he'd stay in her cabin. He appreciated it now more than ever as he laid on his back to allow his commander to spoon up to him, his cowl comfortably resting and his neck supported by the soft cotton. With an arm snaked around his waist and head pressed against his chest, Shepard had fallen asleep almost immediately. Garrus was more than happy to continue to rub circles over her back until he did the same.  
  
–--  
  
Garrus stirred a few hours later on his side with a quietly snoring warm body in his arms, spooned comfortably with her back pressed up against his chest and head tucked under his chin. Her vibrant red hair laid scattered against the starchy white of her human pillows and he was pretty sure he could feel a couple of stray strands in his mouth from when she tossed and turned in the night. He was about to move, to pull away from his resting commander to let her sleep. He still needed to get back to work on calibrating that damn Thanix. However, he noticed the soft whimper and a sniffle that came out of her as he tried to shift.  
  
He froze.  
  
Was Shepard... crying?  
  
He wasn't quite sure of what to do in that exact situation. Shepard didn't cry. In the years that Garrus had known the commander, tears had never fallen from her eyes. Sure, he'd comforted Shepard in the past, just as she'd comfort him, but he’d never seen her quite so fragile, so vulnerable. Never with her guard down enough to allow her to actually  _cry_. A feeling welled up in his chest, a burning kind of feeling, one full of the desire to protect and support. All he wanted to do at that point was to hide Shepard from the galaxy, away from the pain and the death and the constant looming dread of the Reapers. She'd already seen enough death and destruction. She'd already died once for the cause. She sniffled again and brought a hand up to her face to rub at her eyes.  
  
“Shepard?”  
  
She stiffened in his sleepy embrace.  
  
“Garrus, I--” she croaked out. “How long have you been awake?”  
  
“I just woke up.” The arm he had tossed over her shifted back slightly, pressing her a little more firmly to his chest. “Are you okay?”  
  
“Yeah, I...”  
  
He couldn't miss the pained, shaky sigh that escaped her lips. “I'm just...”  
  
She didn't need to continue; he already knew what she was thinking. His hold tightened around her.  
  
“Do you ever get nightmares?”  
  
The question almost caught him off guard, but Garrus composed himself and thought it over for a moment.  
  
“You already know intend to expect the worst. Dreaming about 'what if's... Dreaming about that kind of thing will only make sleep harder to come by. Besides, we've already gone through to hell and back. Who's to say this'll turn out any different?”  
  
“I guess we have seen a lot of things go pretty bad,” she mused. "You can't do much worse than dying, and I've already been there and done that."  
  
“Mmn. But we'll get through this,” he affirmed. “We got through Saren, and the Collector Base. I know you can do it.”  
  
Shepard turned over so Garrus could see her face. The whites of her eyes were red and strained, and the skin around them was puffy and damp with tears.  
  
“There was a boy.”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Back on Earth. There was a boy. When Anderson and I were getting off planet, he was hiding in this vent and he just... disappeared.”  
  
He blinked, not exactly keeping up. “Was this your dream?”  
  
“No. Yes. Well, kind of. On Earth, this kid... we saw him get on an evac shuttle, but it... didn't make it out. It was taken down seconds after it took off.”  
  
“... You've been having nightmares about this kid you saw back on Earth?”  
  
Shepard nodded the affirmative and pressed her face up in the crook between his neck and shoulder.  
  
“What if I can't do this?” Her voice was muffled by the warm, leathery skin below his mandible. “There are billions of lives out there, and so many of them die with every decision I make. Every second is more lives lost, I can't--”  
  
"Every decision you've made has also saved lives. There's a lot of people who wouldn't be alive if it weren't for what you've done. I know you can do this, Shepard. And for whatever it's worth, I'm with you.”  
  
He could feel Shepard smile at this against his skin, just a little, and he brought up a hand to run his fingers through that alien human hair of hers, savouring that foreign silky feeling. Strands slipped between his talons effortlessly, and it shimmered firey red as it caught the light. It took a couple of minutes before he could feel the mood shift, as their thoughts drifted away from what they’d just talked about and onto other things. That program probably had finished checking through his calibrations by now.   
  
“You'd make a good Primarch, you know.” Shepard said, speaking up.  
  
"Huh?" Garrus huffed out a laugh, pulled from his mental calibrations and thoughts of the Thanix still sitting down in the battery. “Me? No.”  
  
“You never know, Garrus. From what I hear, you’re quite high up in the line of succession. Someone’s gonna have to rebuild Palaven when this is all over.”  
  
He considered this for a moment, then shook his head. “I'm no leader, Shepard, I don’t think they’d want a turian like me as someone as important the Primarch of Palaven.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“Think about it, Shepard. Failed C-Sec officer, vigilante. Somehow I don’t think that’s the kind of resume that screams 'Primarch material'.”  
  
Near silence filled the room once again, a few moments of nothing but the hum of the SR2's engines and slow bubble of the fish tank before Shepard spoke up again.  
  
“Would you wanna go back there, after all this?”  
  
“Palaven?”  
  
She hummed the affirmative. “Mm.”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Part of him yearned to be back home, back to the sweeping silver hills and hot blue sun that he knew to be his home world. He longed for the midnight sunlight hours in between the setting of one moon and rising of another, for the strong winds that blow shimmering dust through the air, and yet beneath all this pining, he knew there would always something missing if he did return. Or rather, someone.  
  
“What about you? You want to go back to Earth?”  
  
She shrugged noncommittally from her spot comfortably curled against his carapace. “Maybe. Depends.”  
  
“Depends? What on?”  
  
“Maybe I might want to go to Palaven.”  
  
Garrus’ mandibles flare with amusement. “Palaven, hmm?”  
  
They'd like that together for a while longer, content to talk while curled around each other. Her legs tangled around his own, brushing up against his leg spurs with her chest pressed up to his carapace. There was something to be said about the way her hands were absentmindedly tracing little shapes, little patterns into the fabric of his tunic as they held each other. They were comfortable being able to lay there together, and so that’s just what they did.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry y'all for the repost, but the original and its formatting was really bugging me and I'll probably re-edit this in the future too. Also the second bit felt super rushed and it still kinda does but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> My Shep's a sweet cinnamon roll paragon colonist/sole survivor and Garrus is just Garrus so everything I touch turns to hurt/comfort and I'm so sorry
> 
> Huge shoutout to Jay for being my beta and Nikki for getting me off my ass to start posting my fics. Y'all are too good for me I swear <3333
> 
> I'm also agent-pluto on tumblr if you wanna find me over there


End file.
